Race Recaps

Tim Steele Win Kentucky 150 ARCA Race

Monday, July 3, 2000

Tim Steele took advantage of fast starts on several late cautions to win the Kentucky 150 by less than one second on Sunday night. Steele led the inaugural ARCA race at Kentucky Speedway for 63 laps in his HS Die-Softech Ford to complete the 100 laps in an average speed of 107.313 miles per hour.

"Everything just went like a dream," Steele said after the race. "Back in 1988 I had a tire problem like this, so we figured it out way back then. The crew was bad to the bone and made my ride easy."

Steele started from the outside of row one in the race, and jumped into the lead on Lap 14. He lost it six laps later, but regained the lead from Laps 28-50. He took over the lead again on Lap 68 on the third caution of the race and maintained through two late cautions. Steele defeated series point leader Bob Strait (Midway Islands Ford) by 0.968 seconds to pick up the 22nd career ARCA victory.

"We'll just have to wait and see what happens with the point race. We could have gone down to Daytona, and we could have played the numbers game, showed up and run a lap to get bonus points," Steele said. "To me that wouldn't be right. I want to win it honestly. If you look at it, with the bonus points, if we just had that we'd be right there near the lead. We've been thrashing just to get where we are and hopefully when we come back in August we'll be close up."

Strait was pleased with his race, but conceded Steele was just better. "I pretty much stayed out of trouble all day and didn't have trouble with a pit all afternoon. Tim (Steele) was pretty tough all day," he said. "We needed a perfect set of tires and he would have needed a real poor one to beat him. Things went pretty smooth. All my pit stops were under caution and I needed to change all four tires every time. There were some definite tire concerns, but we all battled it."

Ron Cox (John Dunn Trucking Chevrolet) took home the Firstar Star of the Race award for making the largest gain over the 100 laps. Cox started 33rd, but improved to finish fifth, the final car on the last lap. Firstar will donate $500 to the charity of Cox's choice for his achievement.